Webinar Archives

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Forms, shores, and re-shores are a temporary structure that carries the weight and construction load of the permanent structure until it is strong enough to stand up for itself.  While serving this temporary duty, forms, shores, and re-shores impact construction safety, cost, productivity, and schedule, and influence appearance, deformations, tolerances, and cracking of the hardened reinforced or prestressed concrete. 

This presentation introduces Codes, standard specifications, OSHA, and ANSI documents that address responsibilities for forms and shores.  By an example of a multi-story building, we look at how shore and re-shore systems work, including how shoring & re-shoring plans must be synchronized with rate-of-strength-gain of the concrete, as influenced by mix-design and ambient temperature.  This complex topic demonstrates how schedule, concrete mix, weather, construction technology, lab and in-place testing all come together.

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The concrete industry has a goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.  In response to this goal, many industry organizations are tasked with getting their message related to decarbonization and sustainability to their customers, specifiers, and employees.  Transparency and recognition of goals and achievements are vital.  Kimberly will discuss a variety of methods and materials that should be used to effectively communicate progress.  Kimberly will help you identify key ways to communicate the steps your organization is taking, whether that be in the form of a new product or innovative process, that will help your organization reach your sustainability goals.

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WJE carried out independent studies related to the 2018 collapse of the FIU Pedestrian Bridge in Miami. Most significantly, WJE developed and tested full-sized specimens to evaluate the significance of the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB’s) finding that the construction joint between the northernmost diagonal and deck was left in an as-placed condition, rather than intentionally roughened as required by the project specifications. The webinar also describes WJE’s independent review of shear friction strength in accordance with the AASHTO Code.

The presentation describes the details of the experimental program that demonstrated that, had the construction joint been roughened as required by the project specifications, the collapse would not have occurred. Contrary to NTSB’s findings, the contractor’s failure to roughen the surface was the primary cause of the collapse.

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Part of the Sustainable Structures Webinar Series: This one-hour program is intended for professional designers and engineers. The attributes of precast concrete will be presented, demonstrating how these qualities may be applied to the design and construction of safe and efficient storm shelter facilities. The versatility and resiliency of precast concrete will be further highlighted by a video demonstration, and a series of case studies.

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Concrete is used in nearly every structure we build today, including buildings, bridges, homes, and infrastructure. With greater emphasis placed on sustainability, design professionals are faced with the challenge of meeting traditional design criteria with evolving criteria that support green building and efforts to reduce impact on climate change. When looking at the environmental impact of a building, it is important to assess every stage of the environmental life cycle, from material extraction and product manufacturing to building operations and maintenance through to end-of-life. Concrete offers many environmental attributes that help reduce the overall environmental life cycle impacts of a building. This learning session explores how life cycle assessment can be used to measure and lower the environmental impacts of concrete buildings.

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Part of the Sustainable Structures Webinar Series: Prescriptive building code requirements represent provisions for the least safe structure that may legally be built in a jurisdiction. Over the past 20 years, the building design and construction industry have witnessed an increase in the number of trade-offs of passive fire safety features for active systems. As natural disasters attributed to climate change continue to escalate, the population of neighborhoods located along with the wildland-urban interface increases, and fire and emergency access to buildings in densely populated areas is obstructed, multiple drivers arise to consider more robust construction for our built environment.

The presentation will provide an overview of increased risks from natural and human hazards, identify approaches to mitigate their effects through voluntary and mandatory strategies and demonstrate the importance of incorporating standards for resiliency beyond minimum code requirements.

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A lot is known about Type I Construction (non-combustible) because it has been used for decades for multi-story construction.  Although Type IV Construction (heavy timber) is not new, it is just now beginning to be used with greater frequency in multi-story construction. This presentation will provide an overview of the building code as it relates to Type I and Type IV Construction. Case studies will be used to demonstrate relevant code sections that apply to Type I and Type IV buildings using the current Minnesota Building Code including:

    Chapter 5 – Area and Height limitations of Type I and Type IV
    Chapter 6 – Fire Rating requirements for Type I and Type IV
    Chapter 7 – Fire and Smoke requirements, shafts, sound assemblies  
    Chapter 9 – Fire and Life Safety requirements of Type I and Type IV
    Chapter 23 – Wood and heavy timber construction.  

In addition, materials and special inspections will be discussed for each type of building.

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As computing power become faster and smaller it leads to advances in non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques for structural concrete condition assessment. We will explore some of the newest techniques in the market and discuss how they can be use on structures and construction projects. We will also review a practical approach to finding construction flaws such as honeycomb, void and cracking in new structures as well as scanning to map out corrosion damage in aging structures using many different Non-Destructive Testing techniques.

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Concrete is a durable, resilient material that can provide many benefits to efficient, sustainable structures in the long term. While concrete does have an upfront CO2 impact, the industry is working to reduce GHG emissions and increase the efficiency of its products. This presentation will discuss technical innovations to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete and examine current process improvements that are pushing the industry forward to a more sustainable future.

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Concrete is unique among building materials. Its formulation is highly influenced by its application. Design professionals and contractors have a greater influence on concrete formulation than they do with other building products. Concrete can be made stronger, lighter, more flowable, stiffer, less permeable, and even weaker depending on performance needs. No other building material is that versatile. This presentation will discuss how design and construction teams can implement ten simple strategies to reduce concrete’s carbon footprint today. The recommendations are listed broadly in order of priority, but not in order of impact reduction. All are important and should be implemented. In addition, the strategies are meant to achieve a lower carbon footprint without impacting other desired performance capabilities for the concrete.